Microsoft has made Windows Phone Mango operating system beta available to developers and Mango can can be used to develop applications for both the currently shipping NoDo Windows Phone operating system build. New features include multitasking that allows apps to carry on doing something when not active in the foreground and developers now have access to the compass and gyroscope sensors for things like games, whereas apparently these parts were missing earlier………
Microsoft is distributing Mango to developers now as part of an ‘early release’ program that will over the next several week expand into a global release:
For Mango, that starts today with an early access program for developers. We’re still working out some final kinks in the distribution and support infrastructure for delivering Mango to all of our registered developers around the world, but are inviting the most eager developers to come get Mango today, for their retail devices, as part of our early access program!
Interested developers can head here to get started. Full instructions on how to grab Mango can be found here. While WP7 is a promising platform, its still small market share is a testament to its imperfections. Mango goes a long way to smoothing out the operating system’s rough edges and filling out its feature holes.
Features:
- Outlook Conversation View – Emails combined together in threads
- Lync Messaging Client – Enterprise messaging client
- Twitter integration – Tweets integration into people hub
- Office 365 integration – Office 365 features built-in
- Bing Vision – Scan QR, Microsoft Tags, books, CDs and DVDs
- Bing Audio – Similar to Shazam, will identify songs
- Windows Live Messenger integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
- Facebook Chat integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
- AOL Messenger integration – Integrated into the people hub and messaging hub
- Contacts grouping – Create groups of contacts to send messages to
- Xbox LIVE sync function – Sync function to likely sync settings/games across devices
- Now playing artist information on lock screen – album art on the lock screen
- Visual Voicemail support – Visual voicemail using same method as iOS/Android
- Network awareness NCSI support – improvements for switching between networks/optimization
- Internet Explorer 9 mobile – HTML5 support and hardware acceleration
- Multitasking support – switch quickly between apps
- Fast application resume – quickly resume recently used apps
- Podcast support – download podcasts via the Marketplace
- Turn-by-turn navigation in Bing Maps – voice guided directions and turn-by-turn
- SMS dictation – Microsoft tellme dictates messages
- East Asian Language keyboard support – additional language support
- Handwriting and dictionary support – support for writing Chinese characters
- Pin Outlook Folders – Pin folders as favorites inside Outlook
- SkyDrive integration – Access SkyDrive documents from Office Hub
- Kinect support for games – interact with Kinect and Xbox games from Windows Phone
- Outlook email server search – search Exchange servers from Outlook client
- Complex (alpha-numeric) password support – strong number and character password support
- Information Rights Management – support for protecting e-mails and Office documents
- Ringtone support – third party ringtone support
- App list – automatically detect list, implemented jump list and search for apps
- Marketplace search improvements – apps, podcasts, music separated for easy search
- App install improvements – progress bar install UI
- Search extras – User search actions can be connected to third-party apps
- Motion Sensor – apps to use new gyroscope hardware
- Background audio – apps can run audio in the background
- File download service – third-party apps can download files from the web
- Alarms – alarm notifications for third-party apps
- Pin app features – Users can pin live tiles of deep app features in third-party apps
- Zune Smart DJ mix – allows users to discover new music and save/create playlists
- Camera sound toggle – users can now disable the camera shutter sound
- WiFi improvements – support for hidden SSID networks
